Putin’s manipulation: ISW explains the video with Yanukovych
2 September 2025 09:53
Russian media published a video featuring former fugitive Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country during the Revolution of Dignity. In his address , Yanukovych claims that he “purposefully worked to bring Ukraine closer to the EU,” but, in his opinion, European partners behaved incorrectly.
Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believe that the Russian authorities deliberately timed the video to coincide with Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin’s speech at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.
What Putin said at the SCO summit
on September 1, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China, Putin repeated the thesis that the “crisis” in Ukraine arose because of the Western-inspired “coup” of 2014, i.e. the Revolution of Dignity, and not because of Russian aggression.
The Kremlin dictator also claimed that the war in Ukraine was the result of the West’s constant attempts to drag Ukraine into NATO, which allegedly posed a threat to Russia’s security. He emphasized that the “coup” removed the country’s political leadership, which did not support NATO membership.
Putin argued that peace in Ukraine is possible only after the “root causes” of the conflict, which the Kremlin interprets as discrimination against the Russian-speaking population and NATO expansion, are eliminated.
The Kremlin likely timed the release of Yanukovych’s video address to coincide with Putin’s SCO speech to lend legitimacy to Putin’s demand for regime change in Ukraine.
What Yanukovych said in his address
In his video address, Yanukovych emphasized that his alleged goal was to secure Ukraine’s accession to the EU. He also accused his European partners of “misbehaving” during the negotiations and criticized the EU for not understanding Ukraine’s economic problems.
Yanukovych added that he had always opposed Ukraine’s membership in NATO, which, in his opinion, could lead to disaster and civil conflict.
Yanukovych’s last public media appearance was in July 2022, when he called on Ukrainians to surrender to Russia. The date of the new video address is unknown, but he began by saying that Putin was “absolutely right,” suggesting that the video may have been directed by the Kremlin.
Analysts say that the publication of Yanukovych’s video in Russian state media could be aimed at creating the impression that he is the legitimate leader of Ukraine, not the current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. However, such claims are false: Yanukovych left the country without permission after the Revolution of Dignity, and Ukraine has held several democratic elections since then.
Putin’s repetition of these theses demonstrates that his demands for regime change in Ukraine are not new, but rather reflect his original military objectives, voiced back in 2021 in his essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” and in a speech preceding the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. The Kremlin’s attempts to reinstate Yanukovych as Ukraine’s legitimate leader, including his visit to Belarus in March 2022, only underscore Putin’s unwillingness to abandon his original goals for the war.
The lack of progress in peace talks shows that this position remains a key factor in the escalation of the conflict.
